Santa Fe's popular Spanish Market was happening that last couple of days I was in town, so I figured I should check it out. In fact, while we were driving around Friday evening so we could have drinks on top of the La Fonda, we encountered closed streets, white tents, a bandstand in the plaza and hardly anyplace to park. That's when we found out about the Spanish market. So I went downtown very early Saturday morning to see what all of activity was about.
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| Already crowded at 9:30am. |
The Spanish market is a fabulous shopping venue if you love things like retablos, hand-carved icons, Mexican tin art, painted religious symbols, etc. The variety was amazing, with both local artists as well as artists from various Latin-American countries, including South America represented.
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| A prize-winning carved and painted icon. |
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| A popular artists wares. |
It became pretty warm out quickly, so soon I was off to my next venue: SITE Santa Fe.
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| A gallery on wheels parked in front of SITE. |
The current exhibition was provocative as usual:
More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness. Each artist explored concepts about what is reality and what is truth, with fool-the-eye stuck elevators, Disneyland-esque photos of real theme-parks with unreal attractions including the Twin Towers, video of actors blurring the line between audition and reality, newspapers with the headlines you really want to see, and one of my favorites: a video of what happened right
before Velazquez painted his famous work, La Menias. The artist hired actors and dressed them in period costumes so they looked just like the players in the painting. It was like watching ghosts from 1656 going through the motions on a perpetual loop in time.
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| Velazquez' masterpiece |
The whole show is artful lie after artful lie, but in such a way that you start to question reality....is what you are seeing real? After SITE, I ventured across the street to be overwhelmed by vegetables and fresh flowers at the Farmer's market and a couple more galleries.
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| Farmer's market tends across from SITE. |
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This whole area is called the Railyard District and if you like contemporary art (no emasculated kokopellis in sight anywhere!), this is the hot spot.
Later, mainly just wandering around. I saw a home with white doves living there....on the porch, and in the trees. They seemed to have a coop somewhere.
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| I love doves! |
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| This beauty posed for me in a nearby tree. |
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| Random image. |
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Later, I had a very enjoyable meal at
Annapurna's, a vegetarian restaurant that reminded me of a place I used to go to in Santa Cruz, CA. The South Indian Plate was amazing but I think I made myself ill from all of the food! My other favorite place in Santa Fe is
Harry's Roadhouse. I went there twice on this trip. It's a funky joint with fabulous food- if you are a fan of
Guy Fieri and Triple D, you will understand what I mean since the show did go to this restaurant. I had blackened catfish, creamy grits, and real-deal collard greens with hot pepper vinegar one night! Delish.
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| Don't forget the homemade fresh ginger-lemonade! |
That's all from Santa Fe! Look for more prints in the next few days as I finish some new artwork!
Ciao,
~Reb
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